


The week of 2017

by SandyD



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, axgweek
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-12-03 01:34:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11521764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandyD/pseuds/SandyD
Summary: I hope that this time I do write for all the prompts, that is my goal at least.I hope you all like it!





	1. The Smith of Noviomagus

**Author's Note:**

> Hello All,  
> This is my first story for AxG week 2017. The first prompt is Cat got your tongue, and I tried to write something with the sentence in it and it just not worked. So I just took the meaning for it as not being able to speak.  
> Next to that this is also a requested sequel for my fic Across the Rhenus, you can read this alone, but it might make more sense if you have read that one too. That fic had an open ending and people requested to het a sequel on them meeting again and this is how I imagined that.

Noviomagus was a busy city, mainly with soldiers but also people started to live their from the surrounding areas. Not everyone in the city was from Roman heritage, a lot of Germanic people were taken as slaves. That is how it started for Gendry too. 

It had been years ago and at that moment he might have had just 20 name days. The ten years after then were hectic to say the least. He had been taken outside his village and he was still happy that the rest of the villagers were left alone. They did not burn the city, they just came stealing him in the night. They did not come specially for him, they had come for her. He never forgot that night or the small part of his life in which she had been too. 

They did not kill him, because he was a smith. He was a Germanic smith, who knew about mending bronze and other metals, weapons and simple horse shoes. That knowledge was very valuable to everyone, especially the Roman empire. There were wars everywhere to keep expending the empire. 

He was not in the worst position as slave, he did not have to train like a warrior and be a Gladiator, like Jon. Jon and he slept in the same shed and had the same master. Jon had been half Germanic and half Roman too. Except his father had been the Roman one and he had taken Jon home from the war as his bastard. His father’s wife was not happy about it, to say the least. So Jon grew up within the Roman Empire, while Gendry had lived for all his life on the Germanic side. 

They had bonded, also because they needed each other. Jon thought Gendry all about the Roman culture, customs and most importantly the rules. While Gendry provided Jon with the sharpest and strongest swords which he fitted to Jon and made the best protection for him to survive and win fights. Jon needed to fight a lot, against many men, but most of those did not have the same quality weapons or training. In the evening Jon trained Gendry in sword fighting, but mainly trained himself at the same time. 

When you are a slave it is important to have a friend, to have a companionship with someone. For Gendry the day Jon left was a sad one, but a happy one at the same time. Their master set them free, they could go wherever they wanted to go. 

Jon still had family left. If his family had found out that he was taken as a slave they would have bought him immediately, but they never knew. Or at least that is what Jon told him. They had talked a lot those years. It had been five years since he had seen Jon, just as much as they had been slaves. 

“You could come with me to Trajectum?”

Gendry had thought about it a lot. He remembered that Arya was from there. He might even see her again. But it had been five years at least since she had seen him. She probably had a husband now and a good Roman life. Her family also would kill him probably on the spot if they knew about the nature of their relationship. She probably thought him dead and that was better, for both of them. He did not want to torture himself with the thoughts. So he rejected Jon’s offer.

“Thanks, but I think I will stay here in Noviomagus. I can start my own smith shop here and the soldiers here already know my work. Here I will immediately get customers. And the master offered the smithy to me and asked me to train smiths in his services for him and make weapons for his legion. I think this is as much a home as I will every find.”  
That’s when they parted. Jon had received a horse from their master, so he could ride home for Trajectum and to his family. They had gotten freedom from their master and a kind treatment, most slaves could not have said that. But Gendry now had his own smithy and this was the life he always had imagined, even when it was on the wrong side of the Rhenus. On this side their were a lot of soldiers and horses, so here there was work. He sometimes felt bad that he made weapons to fight against the Germanic people, with whom he had lived all his life. But work was work and making weapons was making weapons, he did not wield them so the blame to him got lost in the middle. 

The day had started as any other day. He stoked up the fire and noted the work that he already had today. In the mean time two boys came in. One would deal with the front of the shop, polishing the finished works and dealing with the customers. The other boy would help him smith. 

Gendry never noticed when people would come in, he did not really like to deal with the Romans and the boy in front knew how to deal with customers. He was a great bargainer and he would make a fine seller one day. 

But during the day the boy did show himself in the back, which was unusual. “Sir there is someone to see you.” 

“Tell them to get back later, I am just working on Crecius’s sword.” It was an important customer and Gendry wanted to please the man. 

“The man insist sir, he said he knows you from way back.”

Gendry grunted something and called to the other boy to finish the sword and to be careful with it. It only needed tempering, so it should not be to much of a problem. He had thought the boy about it plenty. 

When he walked into the shop he could not believe his eyes, there stood his friend. “Jon what are you doing here in Noviomagus?” 

They hugged and smiled and it felt great to see his friend again. He looked like a proper Roman with only a light stubble and his hair also was less unruly. “Well my nephew here needed his first sword and I told him that he should get one from the best smith in the world.”

Only then did he notice the black haired boy behind Jon. “His mother also came with us, but she had other things to arrange first.” Gendry never heard of a Roman woman ever arranging something and travelling between cities, but he just nodded. 

“And what about your father?” He asked the black haired boy, who had the same grey eyes as Jon. 

“He is gone.” Was his only answer, but he did not shy away from Gendry and that showed a lot of character he thought.

“Well what kind of sword do you want?” 

The boy, who was called Jon too, he was named after his uncle who had disappeared at the time of his birth, told all about the type of fighting he wanted to do. Jon filled in about his training, how strong the boy was and what he thought might be right for him. 

They would stay the rest of the week at least in Noviomagus and then they might return to Trajectum. Gendry told them that he would start tomorrow with the sword, but it started to become close to sundown. So he told the boys to finish, so they could stop working early and not before long he had closed the shop. 

He walked together with Jon and his nephew to the tavern they stayed. It was one of the more prestige tavern’s in the city and costed more than the average stay at night. Gendry did not remark on it.

“So what do you do now Jon? And how has the past years been?” He also asked little Jon how his teaching and training were. He had got the true Roman life, but Gendry now also learnt from Jon that the boy got bullied sometimes by his friends. “His father was Germanic,” he whispered so the boy would not hear. “And his mother?” Jon gave a small smile, “She never married anyone, she started to teach the Romans about the Germanic culture and their language, in order to maybe get to a peace. She had lived with the Germanic people for a time.” 

Then the boy was back to their table and they started to talk about horses and when the boy learnt that Gendry had grown up on the other side of the Rhenus he wanted to hear all the stories from the Germanic life. 

There was a commotion in the room, while Gendry was just in a story and a woman was laughing and talking. And the moment Gendry locked eyes with her they both went quiet. They froze in the moment, they could do nothing. But stare at a ghost. That is what they were from each other ghosts. He did not hear little Jon call out for his mother. Or how Jon oblivious from their moment, introduced them to each other. It was just a quiet moment and they could do nothing.

Gendry could not speak, could not move and could not think. Until he could. It might have been an hour or a second. He wanted to hug her, kiss her, but he could not breath. And then he needed to get away. His mind could not process this. He was never to see her again. She would live a happy Roman life, as a happy Roman wife, to a happy Roman husband. She was here with Jon, the same grey eyes, the mother from little Jon, whose father was Germanic, never married.

The moment his limbs could move he ran out the tavern, leaving a confused Jon. He still could not talk or think, but at least he could move. From fear he could flee. He did not came far, he could not breath. He stopped in the ally next to the tavern and slid down to the ground. Arya had a son with a Germanic man, from ten years old. Gendry had a son.  
He never knew, if he had known he would have gone with Jon to Trajectum to Arya. But he had not. She was supposed to have a Roman husband, her perfect Roman life. Not a Germanic bastard as husband, a Germanic bastard as son. What did he do, what had happened. This was not supposed to be her life, his life, little Jon’s life. And even when he had not found his voice, she had. “Gendry.”

It was soft and hurt and broken and it was hers. His head snapped up to hers, and he needed to answer her, otherwise it would not be real. Everything would be a fantasy, a dream, his imagination and then it could drift away any moment. “Arya,” it was the most beautiful name, most beautiful word that ever left his mouth. He just whispered it and he tastes the salt of his own tears on his lips.


	2. the best place to find love is at a wedding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone,
> 
> I think i am on a roll here, but don't expect me to be on time for everything. I just wrote this today and it was a bit easier, because i knew what to write!   
> I got together with my bf because of a wedding and a lot of elements from this story are literally how things happened with him and me, some parts don't but a lot do. You can all guess for your self what really happened ;)  
> I did love to write this, so i hope you all like this too!

Arya had dreaded this wedding since the moment she heard that she was supposed to dance. And not the normal I am going out and I try to shake my body parts in a weird way, but the ballroom dance type of way. 

“Ned no one dances like that anymore! Not even at weddings, only the bride and groom do an opening dance and after that you can dance whenever.” Arya exclaimed to him. She was very happy for her friends, Edric Dayne and Eleyna Westerling that they would get married. But did they have to torture her with dancing. “I won’t don it.”

“Please just for me. You can choose or switch partners and it is not even the whole night. We just want to have a few dances with everyone who wants too.”

“And I clearly do not want to.”

“yes but you are in our close group of friends and spend the whole day with us, it is a bit expected from you.”

“I hate you, I hate you both.”

“No you don’t. You love Eleyna and me. And the mix drinks will be free, you can drink all the Baco you want. But then you need to dance.”

“Ugh fine! But don’t expect me to be good at it, I don’t know any ballroom dance.”

Edric smiled wickedly at her, “Yes you will, we arranged dance classes for our friends from Eleyna’s aunt!”

Arya looked utterly horrified. Especially when later on Sansa mentioned that she could dance with Hot Pie, he was also not so tall. Arya needed to find a partner before everyone was taken that was for sure.

Edric and Eleyna did everything nontraditional, because they would even see each other on the bachelor and bachelorette party. Arya did not even argue, there was a reason she was not chosen as one of the people who would help arrange everything. She was a good friend of both of them, but she had expected to go out with just Eleyna and all her girlfriends.

The bachelorette party was fun though. Eleyna’s older sister kept asking her about Robb, which was interesting. First they had been alone with the girls, but in the evening they had a bonfire and bbq and the girls and boys came together. She would not want her own bachelorette party to be in that way if she ever married, but it had been a lot of fun.   
She drank from her dark drink and stared into the fire. Then she turned back to the girl next to her, some kind of cousin from Eleyna and resumed their discussion. She did not know a lot of people from their friends, or had only met them during birthdays, but they were nice people. Ned and Eleyna had nice friends.

She went up to get another drink and ran into a tall boy who just got a beer. She had met him for the first time four years ago on a birthday from Ned, and saw him only one time more in the same year after that. She had been young at that time and she just remembered that this was the friend who bragged about being able to open a beer with everything. But what was his name again?

“Hey you went to Braavos right? How was that?” 

Arya had gone abroad for school when she was just 19 and it had been a year already since she got back. She also now remembered that she did have him as her facebook friend. When she was 17 she thought having facebook friends was important, so she added people even after they had talked only for one time.

“Yes for a year, for my studies. It was awesome!” Arya loved talking about her year abroad. It was one of the best years in her life, she loved being back in Westeros. But just being in another continent was awesome. 

She went on about what she had done in Braavos, what she did now and she asked him what he had been doing. During the conversation she quickly remembered his name, Gendry. He had been a school friend from Ned. They had been in the same class during high school and university as far as she remembered.

“So you are also forced to go to the dance classes?” She asked him and his face got a shape as if he it hurt to think.

“Ned mentioned something, but not that I was forced. But he said nice single friends from them would be there." 

“Yeah like me, I am forced.”

He raised his eyebrows and laughed, “So I need to come to then?”

“If I am forced so are you.”

She never expected him to really come if he did not want to, but he did. Arya wore her favorite black heels, one of the only ones she did not get blisters in. But she had them already since she was 15, so she knew she should throw them away. The shoes had marks on them and during the years she had spilled so much alcohol over them and she had walked over tons of sticky floors of dance clubs with them, that the shoes never would be pretty again. But to learn to dance they were perfect, because she never slipped with these heels. 

They were just drinking a drink and talk with people before they would start the class. She had shot a glance at Gendry once in a while. She was talking to one of Ned’s cousins, who came with the idea that she would claim Ned as a partner. “Then I at least dance with a partner who can dance.”  
Arya saw how she walked to Ned and she slowly followed, because Gendry was standing next to him. “You will be my partner.” The girl said to Ned and, he only laughed and accepted. Arya did not know if it was the treat from Sansa that she might dance with Hot Pie because he was also short, or some weird courage that bubbled up, “And you will be mine.”

She had claimed Gendry as her partner and he had just smiled, and maybe said OK, she did not remember. But when the class started, she stood in front of Gendry. And during the night they had switched partners sometimes, but in the end she danced more with Gendry. She would not admit it to Dayne, but she silently thanked him for forcing her to dance. 

The day of the wedding was beautiful. The sun was shining and Arya wore a beautiful red dress. She let Sansa do a do-up in her hair, but Arya predicted that it would be loose at the end of the night. First they went to the courthouse and when she talked with Gendry her heart seemed to flutter a little bit. She kept glancing at him during the day. At the church ceremony they sat next to each other and it felt almost as if Arya was together with Gendry. She shared her water bottle with him which they had gotten before the ceremony and it all felt new and weird. Arya never really liked guys in this way. Except for her first love when she had been 14 or was it 15? She did not remember, it was a holiday love. They kept it on for four months and after that he broke up with a text. Arya was not even that upset about it at that time. She got more invested in school and guarded herself, which made her less approachable and less aware of her surroundings. 

At night they were seated next to each other and in her pit of her stomach, it felt like this was not a coincidence. But she had a lot of fun talking with everyone at the table including Gendry. At one time she felt his hand on her leg and she started to feel warmth. 

After dinner they talked until more guests arrived and then the opening dance started. Ned an Eleyna were both amazing dancers and it looked beautiful. Then they all would dance and first they danced with other people, but eventually she ended up dancing with Gendry. It was only for a moment, because then the music changed and the dance music came on. That night she danced with the girls and friends, even Hot Pie and she kept glancing towards the table were Gendry stood if he was not getting a beer at the bar or danced with them. 

The DJ said something, but Arya did not hear what he said. The comments from the girls around her made her think about how obvious it was that she was interested in Gendry. But when Gendry put his beer away to slow dance with her, Gendry might have an obvious interest in her too. There were not that many couples on the dancefloor now for the slow dance, but she was in Gendry’s arms and it felt great. “You are even more shy than me,” he whispered. “I am just not good with this,” she whispered back in his ear. 

When the music picked up a beat, she kept dancing with Gendry for a while. Until he went back to his beer and she danced with some girls. She had an amazing night.   
At one point when she stood on the side of the dancefloor she felt arms surround her and she immediately knew who it was. The couple said goodbye with a last dance. And after that Arya turned to Gendry. “We should meet again sometime.”

“I agree,” he smiled.

“Give me your phone.” He handed her the phone and opened the add contact page. She added her number in his phone and she wondered if they really would meet up after this.

“So when are we gone kiss?” He got her off guard with that question a bit, but she also felt giddy about that thought. 

“Well there are too many people in here.” 

He dragged her outside and when they were in the parking lot they shared their first kiss. It was awkward and sweet. And the wrong timing, all people left now the party was over. She heard someone say that she did not know them. Or heard whistles from guys and girls alike. 

They both had another ride, so they said their goodbyes and Arya felt like flying. She got a text when she got home and it felt great. She had kissed people in the bar before, but this felt different.

At night she could not sleep, because her stomach hurt and she felt to awake. And then it hit her, she has fallen in love with Gendry. She had kissed before but she never fell in love at night. She was fucked. And this was so stupid. Everything was stupid!

Arya learnt that the best place to find love is at a wedding


End file.
